Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man

Paul and Linda

February 1981

Panda

I'm sure this panda is one many Beatles fans are familiar with! It was given to The Beatles by the fans in the above picture at their concert on 20th November at Manchester's ABC Cinema and filmed by Pathe News for Beatles Come to Town.

(source)

The panda made appearances in later photos of John at his home in 1965, and finally with John and Julian in 1967 (and one scary looking koala). How lovely that must be for the fans to know that it was kept and obviously so well liked.

(source)

Happy 74th Birthday Ringo ♥

The Beatles giving Ringo the bumps for his 24th birthday in 1964, 50 years ago.

Snap Crackle Pop

Beatle-bits

Beatle-bits

Ringo continually bites his lips, drums his fingers; Paul takes great pride in his Beatle-cut is forever combing his hair; Long John Lennon has waist-line worries, often pats his stomach to see if it's getting smaller; George is an inveterate guitar plucker, strums, picks and tunes his instrument every spare minute.

Roland Kirk is one of Beatles' favourite artistes. Roland - a blind, American modern jazzman - plays three instruments at one time. Beatles saw him last September at a London jazz club which they frequent...

In the beginning when the Beatles practised at John's house, John's aunt made them do their rehearsing standing outside on the porch.

John once bought a £40 leather jacket and proceeded to bash it about in order to get it creased and worn looking so that it would be more "with it."

All four Beatles smoke king-size filter-tip ciggies - Ringo at 20 a day the heaviest smoker. In common with most Liverpool pop-toppers, they drink an occasional whiskey and coke - Hamburg's favourite drink.

The Beatles often refer to road-manager Neil Aspinal as Nell.

John very seldom eats a proper meal. "I consider eating just a waste of time," he says. "So is sleeping. To my mind, the ideal scene would be to have pills to satisfy your hunger and pills to keep you fresh."

The Beatles played at George's brother's wedding five years ago.

Ringo's dad is a painter with Liverpool Corporation. His mum used to be a barmaid, but doesn't have to work now.

Some Beatles' fan has taken the iron foot scraper from John's old home in Menlove Avenue. Some souvenir!

Even when Ringo was working as an apprentice fitter he used to make rings from nuts and scrap metal - but his work-mates called him "Ritchie" - "Ringo" was to come later.

Adelaide

BEATLES' SHOW STOPPED AS FANS RIOT
Express Staff Reporter: Adelaide, Friday
The Beatles' first concert in Australia ended in a near riot at Adelaide's Centennial Hall tonight when police had to stop the show as weeping, hysterical teenage girls started to storm the stage.

They welcomed us like liberators - George Harrison.
Ridiculous, wonderful, fantastic, and so on. We've had massive receptions all over the world, but never one like this. In numbers and spontaneous warmth it exceeds anything we ever dreamed of. A unique feature of the crowd was its gaiety. I've seen films of de Gaulle re-entering Paris after the recapture of France and the Allies marching up to Italy. Without wanting to draw comparisons, the expressions on the faces today were similar to the faces of people freed from captivity. The Australians are magnificent Beatle fans, and the great thing is that each State is a separate unit - which means that when Ringo rejoins us in Melbourne tomorrow the whole thing should happen again. This is the most exciting week of my life and we're all very proud.

Two dozen police formed a wall in front of the stage and after battling for several minutes managed to check the frenzied fans. It happened as the second of two sessions drew to a close. As the Beatles started their third encore - "Twist and Shout" - frenzied girls clambered over chairs and scrambled towards the stage.

Earlier a shrieking crowd of 25,000 broke through barriers and formed a screaming, waving mob round the Beatles' car when they arrived by air from Sydney. Two girls were trampled underfoot, and a 60-year-old woman collapsed as yelling teenagers surged round the car on it's way to the town hall. Police horses began to kick out in fear, and police beating teenagers off had to use their elbows and shoulders to clear a circle round one of the trampled girls as she screamed on the ground. Tears streamed down the faces of black-stockinged girls, and one of them ran round in circles screaming: "Beatles, Beatles - they're here."

Nearly 100,000 people are estimated to have lined the 10-mile route from the airport to the city. John Lennon took photographs of the crowd from the town hall balcony. More than 200 girls at the grammar school staged a 45-minute sit-down strike in the school yard because they were not allowed to listen to a broadcast of the arrival.

• Ringo Starr, recovered from illness, flew from London yesterday to join the rest of the group in Melbourne. He forgot his passport, but was allowed to go anyway. "A Beatle's a Beatle the world over," an airline official conceded.

All Together Now

These pictures are from Melbourne, Australia when Ringo was reunited with The Beatles on 14th June 1964 after his stay in hospital. I've always felt sorry for Jimmie Nicol who stepped in for Ringo, it must be pretty rough to be so in the centre of it all but with the knowledge people aren't there for you. He flew home the next day with zero fanfare, and didn't even get to say goodbye to the Beatles as they were asleep when he left. He later stated: "Standing in for Ringo was the worst thing that ever happened to me. Until then I was quite happy earning £30 or £40 a week. After the headlines died, I began dying too."


I have so many clippings from this period in 1964 regarding the Australian tour and Ringo's hospitalisation that I had hoped to post on the 50th anniversary of the events, but unfortunately times run away from me and I didn't get to post them on time. These things are always interesting though, so no matter, they will be posted eventually!

A gift from Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley sent Ringo the belt. "I bought the guns at Woolworth's." says Ringo.

Above is my own scan from a clipping I have from the British newspaper The Daily Mirror, this particular clipping published 16 November 1964. I have many vintage clippings and am slowing beginning the task of scanning them all in for this blog. I don't necessarily promise anything we haven't seen before, but I will be including all articles and I also feel even the yellowed paper adds something special to these pictures even if we have seen them in better quality before. It makes me think of the fan that preserved these clippings all of those years ago.

Below is a colour image from the same photoshoot and I have written out the article that accompanied the above images.

THE BEATLES GO WEST...
And they're headin' for a bonanza on the '65 trail
by Patrick Doncaster

Ringo totes a six-gun. Paul and John, astride their nags, look baddies enough for a posse to be close behind. And George puts on the tough hombre pose. It's the Beatles way out west, pardners - a collection of exclusive pictures from their American scrapbook. They were taken on a ranch at Alton, Missouri, where Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr hid up briefly from the posses of fans that hunted them during their 33-day tour that grossed 2,112,00 dollars (about £750,000).

But any other suggestion that the Mersey mopheads might be going West can be dropped in the dust with all the speed of a bullet. Their new single, "I Feel Fine," due on November 27, must leap to the No. 1 spot with its 750,000 advance order. Their new LP, "Beatles for Sale," has broken all previous advance order figures in the vast EMI disc empire, with a total so far of half a million. This is due in the first week in December.
Their Christmas season at Hammersmith, London, is a sell-out already. And it's a hit trail for 1965. Their next film - so far untitled - is going through it's birth pangs.

Comedy

It starts shooting on February 22 - and it will most probably be in colour, so American producer Walter Shenson (he produced "A Hard Day's Night") tells me. "The film will be a mad, zany, wild comedy thriller and definitely not like the first film," he said. "We've got a scriptwriter at work on an original story - we hope," he laughed. "But that's all there is at the moment. There will be at least six new songs in the film. No other casting has been made - but it will all fall into place when we start. The boys are pretty good at this sort of thing."

One report has it that Ringo will be the intended murder victim in this Beatles thriller. But Paul McCartney tells me he knows of no plot yet. Paul and John Lennon will turn out between now and February some ten songs for the film, and possibly two more for a single to follow "I Feel Fine." They wrote more than was necessary for the last film - but there's no waste. They all go on to the LP of the film.

Do Paul and John study the film script first before setting out to write songs? "No," said Paul. "We just write songs and they are fitted into the film. That's what we did last time." I suggested that lines in scripts frequently inspire film songwriters. "We don't work that way," said Paul. "Sometimes we write tunes first without even having a title. We'll get that later. And we don't write all the songs together, although our names always appear jointly." But what seems a gigantic task of producing doesn't appear to present any problems to these conveyor-belt tunesmiths.

Holiday

"Course," Paul grinned, "we're always looking for time off and wanting to know when we're getting a holiday." They are due a holiday before Christmas. They expect another break before beginning the film, too. "But we'll probably be writing songs," said Paul with the resigned look of a man who would like to get away from it all - for a minute.

The Beatles Monthly Book #37

My scans from issue 37 (August 1966) of The Beatles Monthly Book. All articles can be clicked bigger.

Ringo sings "I Wanna Be Your Man" at Munich.

(I like Ringo's reply, and Sandra's letter)

Being interviewed at London Airport in 1964 when they returned from their Far Eastern tour.

Ringo waits for George to put the finishing touches to his "Beatle mop" before going on stage at the Grugahalle at Essen.

(Scanned this purely for that wonderful illustration of George and Ringo in the umbrella)

Three different expressions from Paul, George and John whilst Ringo answers a question at their press conference in Hamburg. Behind them stands Tony Barrow their press officer (with dark glasses) and Brian Epstein.

Indianapolis Motor Speedway Golf Course, 1964

1965 French picture sleeve for 7" Help EP (featuring Another Girl, I Need You, The Night Before, and You're Going To Lose That Girl)

1964 Italian picture sleeve for 7" single